Oh what a lovely war

you know we bounce from the sublime to the ridiculous. nights of less than ten become nights when twenty arrive at the same time. we do our best, we're not sat in the kitchen doing nothing but some nights there's nothing that we can do. last night i fear we disappointed a couple of tables. it's a hard act to balance. our starters and desserts are usually chosen for ease of assembly so that they can be produced quickly once ordered. this does not please some people (please see our tea and biscuits review for evidence of that). But is does mean that we can then have longish waits for mains, or sometimes desserts. take last night, a table ordered 2 canneloni, plating time 20seconds, and 2 fattoush, similar time. their mains order was 1 risotto plus 3 others. therein lies the problem for us. the risottos, whilst par-cooked are prepared to order and have to be done in sequence, whereas the other mains are pretty easy to get together. the easy plating of the starters, together with lots of risottos being ordered meant a reasonable wait between courses.

dear listeners what do we do.

a. leave a long wait for starters, even if they are easy to plate, if we know there is going to be a wait between starters and main.

b. just take the wait as a necessary evil.

what would you prefer? answers on a postcard to canteen, cardiff.

the dessert issue is more an issue of timing. the brulees need to be done to order and i have to stand for minutes with the gun, burning the sugar. when we get 20 at once, as we did last night, i just haven't got the time, mains take precedence, and so we took the drinks off the bill.

a plea: try and come on time. we try to stagger our bookings as much as we can but we also try to accommodate. when the 7.30s and 8.00s all turn up at the same time, we're in trouble and sometimes it can feel as though customers are firing shells. we acn only do our best and the best that we can do is when we don't feel the pressure too much. so apologies to those who feel that the wait can be too long but we hope that it is a wait that is justified.

cheers

wayne